


October Breaks Our Branches

by angelgazing



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-24
Updated: 2010-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-07 12:59:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelgazing/pseuds/angelgazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>pre-Halloween 1981. Things fall apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	October Breaks Our Branches

They spend Tuesday sighing, curled, resigned—Remus with a book in his lap open to the same page it's been for hours, the print is blurred, small, fucking impossible on brittle pages warped by rainwater and tea, when finally, finally, Sirius can't take it.

It's raining outside, the _pit-pit-patter-pit_ on the windowpane infuriatingly regular. It's impossible to breathe because the air is thick with _wet_, and Remus sits against the headboard, shivering in a thin t-shirt and the blankets half shoved off, Sirius's toes curled against his shins for protection from the cold.

The radio is playing an old, slow song, an old witch singing about spells and love and charms and all the same rubbish as every other singer. The words lack a rhyme, and Sirius lacks a rhythm, and there's work to be done that they aren't doing, and Remus finally, _finally_, turns the page.

\---

Nicotine is staining his fingers, slowly; day by day it's _staining_, sinking into the whorls and lines of his fingertips and turning them yellow. There's a plant in the window who can't find any sun that gets his smoke, just because, and it turns toward him, limply, pathetically sad in its want of attention. Remus waters it too much, and Sirius opens the window to October for the first time.

It's still raining and the rain is pulling everything down again.

The plant knows, maybe, knows a lot of things, and it shrinks away from Remus, when he's walking up with the watering can.

It's too cold for any of them here.

\---

Remus wears a jumper from school that's too much wool to be comfortable to lie against. It makes Sirius' cheek itch, and his nose itch, and it's got a hole in the sleeve where Remus' elbow, dry like few things are anymore, pokes out. Sirius presses his thumb there, for warmth, for a hint, for _something_.

There's not enough milk for tea in the morning, and the cupboards are empty again.

Sirius thinks, thinks _very_ hard, like maybe he can press it into Remus with his mind and his thumb on Remus' elbow: I could live like this forever, just you and I and your books and tea and scratchy jumpers. We've got a plant on the windowsill that's dying everyday, the heat won't work properly and winter's coming soon. I'd stay here forever, if you would. Just tell me and we will, just you and I and our empty cupboards.

\---

On Friday there's a note, pushed under the door, in the space where the warm leaks out and the cold rushes in. The words are slurred together, like a drunkard in a hurry, writing too fast. It doesn't say anything at all, and it says _everything_. Everything they never do.

It says, "I love you, Lola, your eyes and your smile and your grace. Your hair falls down in the afternoon, when you sip your tea and your mouth turns down because it's never the way you like it, and I think, I think you're the most beautiful person in the world. More beautiful even than Paris, than the pyramids, than things I've not yet seen. It's Thursday again and you're wearing the red dress and my eyes are bruised from lack of sleep for thoughts of you. You don't know my name yet, but I think you will, I think I'll be safe then. When morning comes around I only hope that I'll be home soon."

Remus shivers, _shakes_, as he reads it with his chin on Sirius' shoulder, and his fingers tremble—from the cold and the lack of tea in him and that it's too early for the sun even to be up—as he cups Sirius' elbow with his palm. Sirius yawns, wide, his own fingers pressing, sticking, sliding—separate motions that're all the same, all the same motion—against the point of Remus' hip, under his shirt where his belly and his skin and even the sharp parts of him are warm.

"I've got," Remus whispers, his voice sleepthick and shaking at the edges, and whatever he's got is lost to the cold, to the dark kitchen, Sirius's knuckles still white against his wand because this is the edge for them, the middle of the night and a _thump-knock-scratch_ at the door. This is life in wartime, when you're standing in your socks at the front door with wands you can't undraw, and a week of being locked inside isn't near enough, when the outside comes rushing back.

Sirius sighs, again, like it's his bloody mantra now, and Remus shakes his head, shifts his feet, makes a visible effort to loosen the grip of his fingers on his wand and steals the note from Sirius' hand.

"Let's just—"

"I have to go, Sirius," Remus says, crushing the paper in his fist.

\---

Sirius sits on the fire escape, the back of his head against the windowsill, plant at his feet for company, wearing Remus' scratchy jumper. His elbow is chilly and he smokes cigarettes until dawn, until morning, until his stomach turns sour on emptiness and nicotine.

\---

At noon, Peter drops by, a sack of sandwiches and rueful grin. He says, "James says I'm to tell you that taking a holiday in war time is cowardly."

It's cold, with the window open, the city drifting up, drifting in. Sirius is still wearing a jumper too tight for him, still thick with nightmares of never being able to sleep again, because his bed is cold and he's turned into a fool.

"Remus around?" Peter asks, after silence stretches too long, and waves a sandwich. The crumbs fall on untranslated scrolls, miles of parchment of code, spread across the table, and he doesn't _notice_. That's the problem with Wormtail though, Sirius thinks blearily, he's always been sloppy. And, "Oh, well, I'm sure he's just working. You know how it is for him, werewolf and all, he's got to do anything he can to get by."

\---

"Sirius," Remus says, softly, with too much noise in the background. And Sirius can picture him, hands in his pockets, leaning against the wall with the telephone propped between his shoulder and his chin.

It's been two days and there's some bird in the background singing in French, and Remus just _breathes_, and Sirius sighs and cups the phone, presses it hard against his ear. Remus just breathes, after his name, like there's nothing else. Like, just called to say it, and because I know the ringing makes you leave your skin behind you.

"I think," Sirius says, and bites his tongue. "Bloody fuck," he hisses. "Bloody _fuck_, Remus. Your bloody flora is laughing at me, I'll have you know."

"Did you water it?"

"Drowned it 'til it gurgled, just like you said to."

"Padfoot," Remus whispers, slowly, and sounds old and tired and a hundred other things he _wouldn't be_, if he'd give in. If he'd just let it, let Sirius bring him in, make him still, make him move for better reasons, with a full belly and laughter and the crinkles at his eyes when he smiles only being there for that. "Padfoot," he says, and sounds old and tired and lost and unbelievably angry, in the way that only Remus can, with it boiling just under his skin, making his voice sharp and quiet, and his mouth thin, "I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know… I don't know what I'm _doing_."

"I think—"

"I—I have to—Operator says my time's up."

"Yeah." Sirius laughs, disbelieving and tired and resigned, listening to silence on the other end. "Yeah, they always say that, don't they?"

\---

"I don't," Sirius says, to his plate of eggs and the syrupy top of Harry's head, "have the slightest idea where Remus is."

Dumbledore nods, sagely, like the know-it-all he'd like to pretend he is until the day he dies. And everyone, _everyone_, pretends not to notice the way Peter starts twitching, with nervousness and whatever else it's always been, when Dumbledore says, "Are you absolutely certain, Sirius?"

"I assumed he was off wherever you sent him, the hurry he left in."

"That's the concerning thing," Dumbledore mutters, mostly to himself, like maybe he actually is concerned, for once. "He's not."

"Do you think that," Wormtail starts to ask, scraping his fork on his empty plate, and then he catches sight of any of the faces in the room, maybe, or just manages to catch a bit of sense before it slips away, and stops. Goes quieter than he was after Sirius put a silencing charm on him for asking stupid questions while they were map making.

"I'm sure that everything is fine," Dumbledore says quickly, pretending he knows how to be reassuring again. "Probably just lying low. But do be sure and let me know if he contacts you."

"Yeah. Yeah, okay." Sirius sighs, charms the fork and the knife into a duel with a flick of his wand, and knows, really knows that something's wrong, when Lily lets him keep Harry in his lap without a word after that.

"In that case, I believe I've intruded quite long enough." Dumbledore smiles tightly, and every gesture is forced now. He finishes his pumpkin juice and stands from the table, hand held out toward Lily who's across from him. "Thank you very much for breakfast, my dear."

"You're welcome," she answers politely, as he shakes James' and Peter's hands. Sirius doesn't look up and Lily walks Dumbledore to the door, like the perfect little hostess.

"It's just," Peter says, when the room is quiet save for the clink and clang of dueling cutlery, "that maybe you should consider—"

"Remus is fine, Peter." James thumps Peter on the back, a friendly gesture to save him from Sirius doing something like force-feeding him his own eyeballs with Harry still in the room. "He's Moony, you know. It's hard to bring a good werewolf down."

"He's—He's a _werewolf_, we all know--"

"Don't," Sirius says, sharp enough to make even Harry stop hitting the tabletop with his palms. The charm ends suddenly, dropping the knife and fork with no clear winner.

"Look, if you can't face the facts—"

"Wormtail, that's enough," James snaps. And that's all it takes, because Peter's never not been cowed by the force of James' personality. "He'll be home soon, send post or call at the very least. We know how it gets when you're out there. It's like Dumbledore said, he's probably just lying low from any number of baddies. He'll get in touch when he can, he always does."

"You're missing that I'm not suggesting he's not here because he's injured," Wormtail whispers under his breath as he stands too. "I've got to get back to work, the Ministry has a lot of owls to send out."

"Do you think," James sighs, when six is down to three, and there are so many ways the sentence could end that Sirius can't guess, not like he used to be able to, "that it's right, Pads? Me hiding away while Remus is off doing Merlin-knows-what and Peter's writing letters to families of the fallen?"

"I think your wife is a ridiculously good cook and your son has syrup in his hair." Sirius drums his hands on the table and Harry does the same. "It's not cowardly, what you're doing. What you're planning, Prongs—the last thing anyone will think you for is a coward."

And Sirius feels his stomach roll against the urge to say, "And that makes one of us."

\---

He gets a postcard later, when he's pretending that he's stopped counting the days. There's a camel on the front, and it shakes its head as waves of heat rise from the sand. The back of the card says, "I'm sorry, Sirius. I keep running out of time and I've got too much to say to not find a way to fill in the spaces. I'll be home, soon enough, there are still things that need sorting here."

Everything's in code now, and Sirius doesn't know what it really means.

\---

"Egypt," Dumbledore mutters mostly to himself, like it's the only way he knows how to talk, as their footsteps echo through the empty halls of this week's headquarters. "Thank you for the information, Sirius. I wasn't sure you'd bother to tell me at all."

Sirius stops when he does and shrugs, tries to pretend he can shrug it all off, like he used to at Hogwarts. "Neither was I," he says, and surprises even himself with the truth. He grabs for the doorknob and twists it backwards, making it howl, and he swears loud enough to be heard over it, three floors down.

Dumbledore smiles and pulls out his wand, taps the knob once and the howling stops. "You should keep your eyes open for things," he says, and somehow manages to make it sound cryptic.

It's just that truth is in such short supply anymore. And Sirius can't think over the lack of it as he takes his time walking down the stairs.

\---

"Sirius," Remus says, and his voice cracks on the line.

"Yeah," Sirius answers, laughs, feels so fucking stupid for the way he could drown in relief. "Yeah, yeah, you ponce, who else is it gonna be?"

Remus laughs too, half-mad and desperate sounding, like he's already watching the seconds tick by on his watch. "The whiskey here is awful, reason enough in itself to leave and never come back."

Sirius leans against the wall, right hand and forehead and nose, and says, "Where are you? Dumbledore keeps asking everyday."

"I'm where he told me to be."

"That's not what—"

"I just called to let you know that I'm fine, I don't want you to worry."

"Remus," Sirius says, something clenching dangerously in his chest, "Moony, you've got four days. What then?"

"Point of where I am, Padfoot. I don't like it anymore than you do."

"That's all you're gonna tell me?"

"It's all I can."

Sirius exhales quickly, like he'd been holding his breath for too long, and his voice is smaller than he'd like, when he says, "I miss you."

"When I get back, we'll lock the doors and not leave for a month," Remus tells him, his voice going soft at the edges, fuzzy over the connection. "Sirius—"

"Time's up?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," Sirius says, "okay."

\---

"There's too much that they can't _know_, Padfoot. It has to be—We have to consider that there's someone—"

"I've been considering it, Prongs. It's bloody all I've been considering."

Harry yawns in Lily's lap, fist holding tight to her robes, and the world stops for the sound of it. There're broomsticks on his jammies, and his eyes are wide with watching them rock back and forth.

"It's all I've been considering," Sirius repeats, and feels like he might be sick.


End file.
